Your choice of World XI, including Steven Gerrard. Well, OK, maybe not your individual choice, but a collective one...

Looking at this World XI one name will immediately jump out at you: Steven Gerrard. He's good, but is he really that good? The rest of the World XI is probably, give or take a personal favourite or two, the team most people would eventually choose. But how did Gerrard make it into the middle?

Partly it's down to how the poll is set up online. When participating, readers could see the running score after posting their vote. It quickly became apparent that Gerrard was garnering a lot of support. This enraged many, who wrote comments about why it was a disgrace and how the Liverpool supporters reading the blog were biased. That tended to encourage more people to back Gerrard, which further infuriated those who didn't want him on the list in the first place.

The poll was put together after a series of Observer and Guardian writers made a case for players for a set of positions: readers then suggested their favourites, and we narrowed it down to a list of 25 candidates.

Gerrard was nominated by many. He and his club clearly divide opinion, but he does have a lot of supporters – many of whom seem loyal to him because he is loyal to them. Gerrard's devotion to his home team has been reminiscent of the West Indies side kept going beyond its best years by Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose. In contrast, there was noticeably no clamour for Wayne Rooney, during his troubled week, to be on the list of best-ever strikers.

The formation, and who was a midfielder and who was a striker (Maradona appeared in both polls) were the other most heated debates. Take a look at that side and most of the midfield defy easy categorisation. It's an attacking formation to be sure – a very nominal 4-4-2.

So who would do the tracking back and tackling in that midfield? Step forward Steven Gerrard ...